2/2/2004

Blue Crayfish:  How They Came into My Life:

By David Klima

I had not had any pets or taken care of any animals, since I was a boy, living in my parents’ house.  And that was decades ago.  I didn’t want the responsibility, and I didn’t have what I would have considered to be good places to keep pets.  Truly, I had no desire to have any pets, ever again.  I had been that way my entire adult life.  The only time I had ever seen a crayfish was when I was 9 years old, in a creek.  It was a little gray one, and I was too scared to pick him up for fear that he would pinch me.  Then in January of 2003, my wife and I bought a house. 

Then in October of 2003, my wife and I were waiting in line to be seated at an Outback Steakhouse, in Aspen Hill, MD.  We had arrived at 4pm, the time they were going to open that Sunday, but it turned out they had a maintenance issue, and would not open until 5pm.  So they told us we’d be the third party seated, and told us to come back at 5pm.

There happened to be a large Local Fish Store, right next door to the steakhouse.  My wife insisted we go in and browse, which we did.  In one tank, there was what looked like a little blue lobster, with one claw missing.  I had never seen anything that looked like a blue lobster before.  He was standing in a small flowerpot that was lying on its side.  He was facing me.  The store employees told me that the claw would grow back, which I dismissed as a lie.  I later found out that they had been telling me the truth.  When I left the store, I was slightly entranced by the little blue crayfish, but I had no intention of having an aquarium, or ever having crayfish, or any aquatic animals, as pets.  My wife seemed more interested in crayfish than I was.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I found myself thinking more and more about having an aquarium, and I ran through possibilities of what to house in an aquarium:  saltwater fish, a reef tank, freshwater cichlids, invertebrates.  It went on and on.  And the image of that little blue crayfish kept coming to mind.  I really thought he was so cool.

So I did some browsing on the internet and visited many Local Fish Stores, and then one day I came across bluecrayfish.com.  I viewed many photographs of many kinds of blue crayfish.  I was surprised to see how many different species of blue crayfish there are, and how much they can vary in size, and shape, and color.  I learned that caring for crayfish is easy, as long as the person doing the work gets a handful of simple things right from the starting gun.  That was it.  I knew I was hooked, somehow, and that one way or another, I would be getting a blue crayfish.  I just KNEW it was part of my destiny, whatever destiny is, or is not. 

From bluecrayfish.com, I learned the following basic care essentials for crayfish: 

• Cycle the aquarium BEFORE putting any crayfish in it.  This is because crayfish are very sensitive to Ammonia, Nitrites, and Nitrates.

• Water Parameter should be as follows BEFORE putting any crayfish in the aquarium:  Ammonia = zero, Nitrites = zero, Nitrates = 10 or less.

• No Heaters:  crayfish should never have heaters in their aquariums.  They do best at temperatures between 55 degrees (the low end) up to 72 degrees Fahrenheit.  Warmer water will at the very least make them irritable and make them grow faster and have a shorter lifespan.  At worst, it will cause them to experience a painful death.

• Oxygenation:  Unlike lobsters, crayfish will drown after 3-6 hours, if kept in water that is deeper than they are high.  To prevent this, the use of an air stone is essential.  I use a long bubble bar air stone that takes up 75% of the width of the aquarium.  The bubble bar sits on the bottom of the aquarium, and bubbles flow upward, and oxygenate the water from the bottom up.  The bubbles also beautify the aquarium.  Some people who have very turbulent waterfall style filters claim that the filter oxygenates the water adequately, and that air stones are not necessary, to keep crayfish.  While this might technically be true for some aquarists with slightly unusual filters, it is NOT true for most aquarists, with most filters.  I believe it is never worth the risk to keep crayfish in water that is deeper than they are high, without an air stone.  Another point to consider is that filters fail much more often than air pumps and air stones do.  When air pumps fail, you generally see it happening over time.  The bubbles will get smaller and smaller, weaker and weaker.  When filters fail, they often just stop running, all at once.  Would anyone really want their crayfish’s life to be dependent on a filter?  Not this aquarist.  I take it a step further.  I have connected my air pump to an Uninterruptible Power Supply (U.P.S.), so that when power outages occur, the air pump keeps pumping air into the air stone, which bubbles away, and provides oxygen for my crayfish.

• Tank Security:  Crayfish are master escape artists.  It’s not that they really want to escape.  They just love to climb and explore.  Unfortunately, if they do get out of the aquarium, they will die very soon, from dehydration.  To prevent this from occurring, it is important to close off the opening where the filter goes into the hood of the aquarium.  I use aluminum foil, rubber bands, and scotch tape to secure this opening.  I also cut out a little round section of a plastic cool whip container’s lid, and then cut an X in it, and slid it up the intake tube of the filter.  This effectively blocks the crayfish from climbing up the filter intake, and getting into the filter, or out of the tank.  It is also important to be aware that large crayfish are strong enough to push aquarium lids open, and escape.  So for large crayfish, it’s a good idea to secure the lid.  Duct tape is effective in holding the lid in place, and can be easily removed at feeding time or cleaning time, and then replaced.

• Feeding:  Crayfish do best on shrimp pellets, which are pre-cooked and sanitized shrimp.  For species that naturally eat vegetation, frozen peas and fresh romaine lettuce make good supplements. The romaine lettuce needs to be weighted down with a rock, so it won’t float. Overfeeding is a large risk, in two ways:  It can actually weaken the crayfish’s exoskeleton, and kill the crayfish.  More commonly, it can pollute the water, which is not good for the crayfish.  A single shrimp pellet per day seems to be the maximum that should be fed to any North American adult crayfish, which is 7 inches or less, in length.  Some of the larger Australian crayfish may require more food.  Younger, smaller crayfish should not be fed more than once every other day.  Crayfish should never be given live, fresh, or uncooked shrimp, because shrimp carries a disease that is fatal to crayfish.

• Sanctuary:  Each crayfish needs a secure sanctuary within their aquarium, to feel secure.  Crayfish will seek this sanctuary on a regular basis, especially during and right after moulting. The sanctuary should be secure on at least 3 sides, including the rear.  I use a large, plastic, reef-like cave with its own floor, and nooks and crannies in it, and a piece of ABS pipe, as sanctuaries.  Zoe, my Cambarus Monongalensis, loves to hideout in both of them.  When she is in the cave, she frequently goes through a hole in the floor of the cave, and burrows her way into the gravel, underneath, so she is underneath her sanctuary, completely ensconced.  I have glanced into the front of the aquarium on occasion, and seen a single claw sticking out from the bottom of the cave structure.  It gives me great joy to see this, a primary burrowing crayfish, ensconced in her home, in her self-dug divot in her gravel, underneath her cave sanctuary.  It also gives me a ridiculous amount of joy to see two claws sticking out of one of the ends of her ABS pipe.

• Tankmates:  There are very few safe tankmates with crayfish.  This is because most tankmates either get eaten by the crayfish, or eat the crayfish.  Crayfish are especially vulnerable when their shells are soft, and when they are weakened, right after moulting.  Cichlids, especially, are noted for eventually dining on crayfish.  Also, many tankmates get ruled out because they require tropical temperatures.  Crayfish generally need room temperature.

• Lighting:  Incandescent lighting is to be avoided because it gives off too much heat, which is not good for crayfish, and because incandescent bulbs burn out fast, and give a poor quality of light.  Fluorescent bulbs are preferred.  I use a blue, actinic, fluorescent bulb, which gives a nocturnal aura to the light.  This is good, since crayfish are nocturnal.  It encourages crayfish to be more active, and to come out into the open more than they might with white fluorescent lighting.  I keep the blue actinic fluorescent light on a timer.  It is on 8 hours each day.

• Plants:  I keep live plants in the aquarium, to serve as a potential veggie snack for my crayfish (so far she’s left the live plants alone), and to absorb any trace ammonia (my ammonia always tests at zero) and nitrates that may be present, and to increase oxygenation, in the water.   I also keep artificial plants in the tank because they are sturdier and easier for crayfish to climb (Zoe likes to hang upside down in the artificial plants), and because they cannot clog up the filter intake.

• It is always a risk to keep more than one crayfish in the same aquarium.  Even if they are a mated pair of the same species, they still may fight, at unpredictable times.  It can be done, if each crayfish has its own sanctuary, and there are lots of hidey holes and camouflage in the tank, so each crayfish has adequate space and privacy.  But it is not recommended, in general.  It is even more of a risk to keep crayfish of different species in the same aquarium.

It wasn’t long after finding bluecrayfish.com, that I purchased my first crayfish, a 6 month old baby cambarus monongalensis, whom I named Zoe.  She is an absolute joy!

In any event, I am now officially hooked on crayfish, especially the blue ones, and I know that eventually I will get another, larger aquarium, and care for more blue crayfish.